Trucks: Criticizing Nelson Piquet Jr.‘s speeding penalty

I’ll be blunt. Nelson Piquet Jr. was shafted in Sunday’s Camping World Truck Series race at Rockingham.

I don’t understand how so little was made of this so let’s reconstruct the scene. Piquet, the former Formula 1 star, had led 107 laps from the pole, and left his final pit stop in second behind Kasey Kahne.

However, Piquet Jr., who chose the final and ideally advantageous pit stall, was ticketed for going too fast exiting. As a result, Piquet was sent to the tail-end of the longest line and ultimately rallied to finish seventh over the last 20 laps.

So how could this happen? Isn’t the advantage of choosing the last pit stall that Piquet would be exempt from the timing lines? That’s typically the case but not at Rockingham where NASCAR gave Speed TV the last stall for a camera mount, relegating Piquet to the second pit stall.

This completely negated the polesitter’s advantage. While Piquet had a clear exit, so did several others with over ten trucks start and parking or getting involved in early accidents. So Piquet’s hard-earned advantage was relegated to next to nothing.

The least NASCAR could have done was back the timing line up to Piquet’s stall to reflect the traditional position of a pit road.

Of course, Piquet ultimately committed the crime and he paid the price. He and his team were notified of the location of the timing lines and it was up to Piquet to adjust accordingly. It was a rookie mistake and it cost him the opportunity to capture his first victory.

It’s just a shame that there’s an asterisk, regardless of how slight it may be.